To follow in the leading footsteps of our global colleagues, KAIZEN® Institute New Zealand brought the first “Office Live tour” group through the Office on the 11^th of March 2009. “Office Live” is a practical way to demonstrate to clients how KAIZEN® principles and techniques can be applied in an office environment. It is a way for KAIZEN® Institute offices to practice what they preach to their clients. A group of 12 people from diverse industries like Manufacturing, Recruitment, Education, Health Care and Information Technology, visited the KINZ office in the afternoon as part of the recent three day Total Service Management training course.

Based on the 6 Level model for Total Service Management, the team at KINZ showed the group practical examples to increase office efficiency by:

·    creating an awareness of waste – preventing the loss of time to non-value adding activities in the office

·     utilising the 5S campaign – sort, straighten, scrub, standardise and sustain the implementation of standards throughout the office

·    Process improvement using Value Stream Mapping and Process mapping to eliminate waste

·     the use and benefits of visual management – easy to understand, keep everything in its place, stock control

·     the creation of a flexible layout and the benefit of working in teams.

Richard introduced the KINZ team board including skills and responsibility matrix and KINZ event planning visual calendar.

Junet introduced few office live examples being used for the college courses preparation and coordination including item Kanban, stationery, item on loan management and some One Point Lessons examples.

David took the participants through the IT part of the KINZ office and demonstrated few examples around IT standards, web page statistics measurements, software management and computer maintenance.

Even though it was only on a small scale, KINZ could offer the group examples of ‘Best practice’ in the office environment and offer inspiration and suggestions to the group to successfully start the improvement process in their own office environment.